What's new
By:
Photoshop Gurus Forum

Welcome to Photoshop Gurus forum. Register a free account today to become a member! It's completely free. Once signed in, you'll enjoy an ad-free experience and be able to participate on this site by adding your own topics and posts, as well as connect with other members through your own private inbox!

Color calibration help


P

puppychew

Power User
Messages
268
Likes
12
Hi - I have am working from a Toshiba laptop
Satellite P770 with Intel HD graphics 3000 chip on the motherboard.


I just purchased an ASUS PA248Q 24-Inch LED-Lit IPS Monitor and need some advice on how to calibrate it.
The reason I purchased this monitor is because it has SRGB settings and thought the color would be pretty accurate.


The work I do remains jpeg images - nothing is printed. I understand it will not be a perfect match, but I would like a Benjamin Moore color to look as accurate as possible to that on a paint chart with some tweaking in Photoshop.


I first started by selecting the sRGB profile which was factory calibrated by ASUS, using the monitor's built in preset. The colors didn't look right - graphics that should look grey looked light tan, etc. I hooked up the monitor on a friend's laptop which has a NVIDIA GeForce 9600M GT graphics card. The colors didn't look quite right on his laptop either, but the greys looked a lot less tan. My next step was to try the basic Windows 7 Color management calibration. This helped - the greys looked less tan.


So then I started comparing actual color swatches from Benjamin Moore to images for these color swatches. For example, I have a color swatch for a color HC 50 (which they call Georgian brick). The actual swatch color is a deep red, on my laptop it looks pretty good, but when I look at in on my new monitor it's a bright orange.


I found the Intel graphics control panel and adjusted gamma, brightness and contrast for this color. I was able to get acceptable results for this particular color. Then I started looking at another color from Benjamin Moore and it was completely off!


I am afraid this process of iteratively re-calibrating manually for a particular color will take days to get right. I'm wondering if there's a better approach available. I'm considering getting a color callibrater (Spyder4Pro colorimeter, for example), but I'm afraid using this won't solve my problem - additonally the expenses are adding up. How much can be done with the built in graphics chipset from Intel, anyway? So any advice would be greatly appreciated.
 
Hi puppychew,
You can go through all kinds of exercises in futility if you do not have a calibrated monitor. Calibration has to be done with a hardware device. I personally use a Spyder Pro 4 which does a decent job. If Tom Mann replies to this post, he is going to tell you that you can't get accurate calibration on a laptop monitor. I have mixed emotions about that, as I used one for quite a while and with it calibrated I got passible results. I purchased an inexpensive HP LCD monitor and the color, I think is pretty accurate after calibration with the Spyder. I compare to what I print and it works for me. So until you get a color calibration device and at least calibrate the monitor, your wasting your time trying to get it to look like it's supposed to. Same applies to you new ASUS monitor. There are lots of threads on this forum about the subject, Tom Mann is our resident expert on this, and I am sure he will reply. Good luck with it.

Read this post http://www.photoshopgurus.com/forum/photography/46726-monitor-calibration-printing.html
 
Last edited:
First, put post #2 in this thread high up on your reading list:
http://www.photoshopgurus.com/forum/photoshop-newbies/46470-screen-technology-better-2-options.html

I'm not going to say that all laptops are lousy for color-critical work, but I will say that it's almost a complete crap-shoot, and nearly impossible to tell without getting it in your hands and spending several hours calibrating and evaluating it. No one can just look at a bunch of laptops in a store (or worse, only look at their specs) and tell which is the best.

With respect to selecting one because it has an sRGB mode, all that advertising claim means is that the gamut of that monitor covers most of the sRGB space. It says ***ABSOLUTELY NOTHING*** about how accurately it does this.

When it comes to trying to calibrate laptop screens, the relevant sentence in the above post is: "...Even worse, even if you use a hardware calibrator, on many laptops the improvement is often minimal, and unfortunately, the average or maximum color error ( delta_E) after calibration is rarely reported by low-end calibrator software. ..."

Sure, a hardware calibrator (if working correctly) will always improve the color accuracy, but it might only be by a small amount.

Since you are doing this for work, you should consider how much an error in color will cost your business.

For example, if several customers each return several gallons of specially mixed paint because the colors on your laptop are not accurate and you have to eat the loss and possibly lose that customer and their friends, you have probably just paid for several *very* good stand alone monitors (eg, an NEC multi-sync with spectrovision calibration) that are guaranteed to be about as close to color accurate as you can get.

Sometimes, one just has to bite the bullet and buy the right tool for the job.

Tom

PS - BTW, you did the right thing to give up on the Microsoft color calibration tool and move to a hardware calibrator. The former is only slightly better than useless for color critical work like paint color matching.
 
puppychew said:
I ordered a Spyder Pro 4. Hope this helps. Thanks
Click to expand...

I can say without reservation that it won't hurt you. Let us know your results. Be aware that this has to be an ongoing process, because monitors change as time goes by. The Spyder can be set to remind you to calibrate. I have mine set to 30 days. Good Luck!
 
UPDATE:
I am sorry for the late response. I purchased a Spyder Pro 4 and just really learned how to use it with the help of their great customer service. My laptop and my external monitor now match each other and paper paint charts and online paint charts. A big problem solved. Thanks for your assistance!
 
I'm really glad to hear it worked out well for you.

If you have any more questions, don't hesitate to ask.

Tom
 
Back
Top